Really good post Rand. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who feels a little strange talking to the SE royal family. But don't be too modest Rand, you are pretty close to being in the SEO elite yourself. :)
I couldn't imagine how Matt, Tim or even Danny feel when people approach them at conferences...but I always wonder if they realize that a lot of the SE rank-and-file asking them questions are having that "I might puke on this guy's shoe" feeling.

Hey Christoph -
I was wondering if the Presell Pimp was going to show up. :) Thanks for your input...you should have my contact info, so feel free to send some info on your presell stuff my way via email.
Much appreciated.

I gotta say that I think Michael Martinez is way off the mark, unless he is excluding any competitive, money-making vertical in his “links-don’t-matter” theory.
I mean, we can all rank for "my penguin punched your Volvo" with content alone, but if you are going to play in the insurance, mortgage, credit card or any other competitive vertical you are going to need a number of good links...and building those links is going to take some time.
From my experience, the sites in truly competitive verticals need links a lot more than they need content. In fact, I see a lot of sites with hardly any content doing great for competitive terms based off of their links alone.
So Michael, hook us up with some real world examples of sites that prove your theory if you could…I would love to be proven wrong on this one.
And since we seem to have an audience with Jarrod, I have a question for him. Where do pre-sell pages fit into the link building mix? If I am correct, TLB sells pre-sell pages and I would like to better understand their ability to improve rankings. Also, do you think Google is actively looking to discredit pre-sell pages, or are pre-sells too hard to find?

A couple more to add (they are a not so much cliches as they are SEO folklore):
Mikkel deMib Svendsen played tambourine for the Talking Heads on their 1982 European Tour
I did a lot of research on this one and never found any definitive proof. There is still a chance he played the ukulele with Flock of Seagulls.
Bruce Clay is Huge in Japan
Also false - but it has been confirmed that Bruce Clay has a posse.

It was a great session Rand. I dug the 13 steps - somehow I missed step 3. Gotta check those PowerPoint slides.
It is really nice to see that link building is heading towards providing useful content instead of spamming the hell out of engines. Let's hope the trend continues.
Hope you got home/will get home ok.